Boiling Point

As I mentioned in the previous post, I gave a presentation on the design of airplanes to all of Mr. Tuttle's classes a few weeks ago. As I also said below, it went really well in the first 5 classes, but the last class of the day was a different story. After discussing airplane design principles with the class, we built paper airplanes and threw them across the room to test out the concepts. Naturally this was a little chaotic, just as it was in all the other classes. However, when I asked them to take their seats though, they could not calm down. So much so that I felt compelled to say, “Look, we won’t have fun interactive lessons like this in the future, if this is how you behave.” They quieted down a bit, we talked about airplanes some more, threw the paper airplanes again, but by the end of the hour, the students started getting loud again. Through multiple waits for things to quiet down, along with asking specific students to stop talking, I got too frustrated to go on. In the middle of a sentence during my summary slide, a just stopped and said, “That’s it, I’m done.” I put about 10 hours into this presentation, so I was hurt by their attitude towards me. This stunned the class for a moment, and Mr. Tuttle chastised the class for their rudeness. Looking back, I think I handled this OK, but I should set my expectations at the right level so things like this do not get to me.